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“Really? I thought you were gonna start talking about macros and nutrient values or some shit. All right!” He bounced on his toes as we walked, looking a little bit like a shaggy, overexcited puppy.

“I’m not that bad.”

“You really are, man, but I like you anyway.” He hooked his arm around my neck and dragged me into a half-headlock, knuckling the side of my head.

A dangerous heat spread through my chest, to my stomach, and lower.

I ducked out of his grip and fixed my hoodie back into place, putting three feet of space between us.

Thankfully, Mikey didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. He’d already moved on, talking about his favorite dishes—pad see ew, papaya salad, and Massaman curry—from a place that could deliver to the hotel.

“Wait. You don’t have a peanut allergy or anything I should know about?” He pulled open the door to the lobby and waited for me to pass in front of him.

“Nope. It’s all good.”

Standing side-by-side in front of the elevator bay waiting for it to arrive, he stared down at his phone while I stared at him—the scruff along his jaw, those yellow sunglasses pushed up into his hair, his curls winding around the frames.

“Order’s in.” He glanced up, and I snapped my eyes forward a half-second too late.

“Porter!” Nielson called out, jogging to catch up to us.

“I’ll text you when the food is here so you can come down to my room?” Mikey asked as the elevator doors opened.

“Sounds good.” I stepped into the car as a guy about my age dressed head-to-toe in denim pushed off the back wall.

“Sup?” he said, brushing past me, lifting his chin in greeting.

“Hey,” I replied, tilting my chin back at him.

In the second before the doors slid closed, I caught sight of Mikey glancing back at me, his lips turned down in a frown.

When the elevator started its ascent, I let out the breath I definitely knew I’d been holding.

Thirty minutes later, standing outside Mikey’s room, I had my fist up to knock when I heard his muffled voice on the other side of the door. I couldn’t catch all the words, but his tone made me think this wasn’t a conversation he would want anyone listening in on.

As I backed away, I heard him say, “No, Mom. I’m close. Gimme a week, and I can make it work.”

I moved a few feet down the hall and slid down the wall to sit and wait for him to wrap up his call.

Mikey’s door opened not too long after, and his head popped out. He looked left toward the elevator bay, then right, where the hallway dead-ended at the stairwell—which was where I was sitting with my back against the wall.

“Hey,” I said, rocking up onto my feet.

“You been out here long?” he asked when I stopped in front of him.

“Nope,” I said, brushing past him to step inside. “Just a few minutes.”

“Uh, you didn’t …you didn’t overhear anything, did you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I’d obviously caught something, but I didn’t have enough context to know what it meant. What I suspected was that Mikey didn’t want me to have heard anything at all. It would have been so easy to lie to him—to indicate I was completely in the dark—but I was already keeping too many secrets from him. Adding this one on top of all the others felt like too much.

“Just you telling your mom you’d make something work,” I admitted.

He nodded, his eyes darting away and his hand coming up to grip the back of his neck. “Okay,” he murmured. “I suppose that’s fine.”

I took a step closer, reaching for him like I intended to comfort him or something. Realizing what I’d been about to do, alarm bells sounded in my head.

I yanked my hand back, shoving it deep into the pocket of my sweats, my throat going dry. I stared down at the carpet, pulling in slow, steady breaths until the burst of panic receded enough for me to think clearly.